There is, some argue, the effect of democracy, as though there were a democracy penalty. But this is absurd, because India is not a democracy. It is a hereditary feudal monarchy with a large set of court jesters and other hangers-on. Parliament is a chimera, or at best a smokescreen. There are what look like elections, what looks like an assertion of the people’s will. But this is a hugely expensive, elaborate charade like the Potemkin villages of Tsarist Russia.
